By: Michael Laba
For the history of the game, gaining an edge in baseball as a pitcher meant throwing faster and training longer. Today, teams are finding that brains, not just brawn may be the most powerful weapon on the field.
Across college baseball, teams have been relying on studying and mastering the data and analytics they gain from players to make training practices, in game decisions, and evaluating players. This change in the past couple years is sometimes the reason why teams have been able to get over the hump and bring home the hardware.
Teams like the University of Georgia and Georgia Southern University baseball teams have invested greatly into this new age of coaching. Both teams own a Trackman radar device which can run around fifty thousand dollars.
Graduate assistant for the Georgia Southern baseball team, Christopher Armstrong is in charge of understanding the readings Trackman technology gives off.
“TrackMan allows us to look beyond velocity and spin and focus on induced vertical and horizontal break,” he said. “It helps us understand how pitches move and how to adjust them beyond what the eye can see.”
An SEC powerhouse like the Georgia Baseball team also involves Trackman in their budget on equipment but they have the luxury of owning a force plate pitching mound, a piece of technology that tells exactly how many newtons of force the pitchers body outputs which allows the coaches to communicate with the players exactly how they can maximize their power on the mound.
For college students athletes that are not the next successful engineer, or scientist would have no idea how to approach all these numbers and maximize their skill for a game that has come so easy to them their entire life. Junior pitcher for the Georgia Bulldogs, Luke Wiltrakis has specific guys like Chris at GSU that helps him simplify his data and analytics to make sure Luke and the other pitchers are not overstimulated.
“We have analytics staff who study the metrics and translate them for us,” Wiltrakis said. “The coaches tell us what to throw based on movement and data because they understand it better than we do.”
Between the Trackman radar and the force plate mound hundreds upon thousands of different trends and numbers are spit out to the coaching staff. Which begs the question what pitching analytics are most important for personal and team success.
Between Chris and Luke, the three most important stats they all mentioned were pitch velocity, pitch break, and the actual baseball being thrown spin rate.
“If you have a good fastball that rides a lot, like it has a high vertical break, then you need an off-speed pitch with a lower vertical break, so it plays off the fastball,” Wiltrakis said. “The goal is for pitches to tunnel together and separate at the last second to get swing-and-miss.”
Chris’ team and Luke's coaches being able to see in real time the exact data the pitch thrown seconds before on an ipad gives them a great edge that a naked eye would never be able to perfect.
The only time all these numbers and charts really matter is when the pitcher takes the 10 second walk to the brown dirt mound in front of a crowd of thousands booing or cheering. One thing in sports an analytical guy cannot figure out is the mental warfare it takes to be a successful pitcher.
“If you focus too much on velocity or movement, your confidence can drop,” Wiltrakis said. “Practice is the time to work on analytics. In games, you have to stop thinking and just get outs.”
Confidence as a pitcher is the make-or-break skill one needs to have to be successful. If you are worried about how your spin rate is not as high as it used to be in the days leading up to your game, you can crumble and get in your own head. A pitcher can then overspin a ball which leads to missing their target and walking multiple batters in a row.
“Analytics are a great tool, but you can’t overuse them,” Armstrong said. “If pitchers think too much about numbers instead of getting outs, it can hurt performance. At the end of the day, location still matters more than how nasty a pitch looks on paper.”
In baseball the team that leaves the baseball diamond victorious is the team that allows the least number of runs. For many programs pitchers can be the independent variable for a team's success.
While analytics gives programs a measurable edge, the game is decided on execution and mental toughness. Data can help tweak mechanics, design pitch sequencing and create strategy, but the pitcher needs to possess the confidence, focus and ability to perform under pressure. As Wiltrakis put it, “Practice is the time to work on analytics. In games, you have to stop thinking and just get outs.” Armstrong agreed, noting that “location still matters more than how nasty a pitch looks on paper.” For college baseball teams, the analytical world can be a powerful tool but in the end it's up to the pitchers to be able to trust his instincts, execute his pitches and stay mentally strong to ensure their team success.